Russia-Ukraine war live: Biden and Sunak set to discuss Ukraine’s Nato bid; Kyiv claims ‘advance’ in Bakhmut

Read More

Russia’s ministry of defence has published an image of Valery Gerasimov for the first time since the failed Wagner uprising of 24 June. Gerasimov was one of the military leaders that Yevgeney Prigozhin had been railing against for weeks before ordering his mercenaries to march on Moscow.

In a video clip posted to the ministry’s official social media channels, Gerasimov is seen receiving reports about claimed attempts by Ukrainian forces to strike targets in Crimea, Rostov and other regions.

Four people died and 11 were injured after Russia’s bombing of a residential area of the frontline town of Orikhiv in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region while distribution of humanitarian aid was taking place, Reuters reports the governor of the region as saying on Monday.

Yuriy Malashko said those killed included three woman and a man, all in their 40s. He added that Russia carried out 36 targeted strikes on 10 settlements of the Zaporizhzhia region.

The claims have not been independently verified.

Russia is “almost certainly struggling with a crisis of combat medical provision, after suffering an average of around 400 casualties a day for 17 months,” the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence update.

It is also likely that civilian medical services have been affected, especially in regions near Ukraine, and that military hospitals are reserving space for officer casualties, it said.

It continued:

As claimed by the head of the Kalashnikov company’s combat medicine training division, it is likely that up to 50 per cent of Russian combat fatalities could have been prevented with proper first aid.

Very slow casualty evacuation, combined with the inappropriate use of the crude in-service Russian combat tourniquet, is reportedly a leading cause of preventable fatalities and amputations.

Poland has detained another member of a Russian spy network, bringing the total number of people rounded up in an investigation to 15, Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski has said.

Reuters reports:

A hub for Western military supplies to Ukraine, Poland says it has become a major target of Russian spies and it accuses Moscow of trying to destabilise it.

“The Internal Security Agency has detained another member of the spy network working for Russian intelligence,” Mariusz Kaminski said in a post on Twitter.

“The suspect kept surveillance of military facilities and seaports. He was systematically paid by the Russians.”

The Russian embassy in Warsaw did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

In June, Poland detained a Russian professional ice-hockey player on spying charges.

In March, Poland said it had broken up a Russian espionage network and detained nine people it said were preparing acts of sabotage and monitoring rail routes to Ukraine.

The following month Poland said it was introducing a 200-metre exclusion zone around its Swinoujscie Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal, citing concerns about Russian espionage.

Vladimir Putin’s decision not to dismantle the Wagner mercenary group and prosecute those who took part in last month’s rebellion against Moscow is “placing himself and his subordinates in an awkward position,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has said in its latest assessment of the conflict.

It writes:

Wagner is still reportedly recruiting within Russia while the Russian MoD is reportedly conducting a competing effort to recruit Wagner fighters to sign contracts with the MoD.

Putin’s decision to not dispose of the Wagner Group – previously Russia’s most combat capable force – is making it difficult for Putin and other Russian power players to know how to interact with the Wagner Group and its leaders and fighters.

Joe Biden’s meeting in Downing Street on Monday with Rishi Sunak – their fifth in the past five months and the sixth since Sunak become prime minister – probably carries more significance than any other.

The two men are not just 37 years apart in age, but increasingly a long way apart on how to handle Ukraine. The disagreements will be kept from the public eye, and the hope is that the meeting can narrow the differences.

The US disapproves if the junior partner goes public on any disagreement, or is perceived to be trying to bounce Washington into action. Pushiness, some say, was the undoing of the Nato secretary generalship ambitions of Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, after he tried to force the pace on arms supplies. Similarly, the watchword of Nato, built on consensus, is unity.

But it is self-evident that the two countries lean towards different positions on the war in Ukraine, and its aftermath. At issue are the conditions set for the path for Ukraine’s future membership of Nato, and the security guarantees that Volodymyr Zelenskiy should be provided by an ad hoc alliance of states in the interim.

And behind that lie questions about escalation and Nato’s future relationship with Russia. At one extreme lies a nervous Germany and at the other, impatient Baltic States and Poland.

Read on below:

Expected negotiations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan remain the only hope to extend the Black Sea grain deal that is set to expire next week, Russia’s RIA news agency has reported.

Reuters reports:

The Black Sea deal, brokered between Russia and Ukraine by the United Nations and Turkey in July 2022, aimed to prevent a global food crisis by allowing Ukrainian grain trapped by Russia’s invasion to be safely exported from Black Sea ports.

Citing an unnamed source familiar with negotiations, RIA reported “there is no optimism” for the extension of the deal – a position that Moscow has reiterated frequently in recent weeks.

“Our practice shows that it is the negotiations between the two leaders that are able to change the situation, the current difficult period is no exception,” RIA cited the source as saying.

“Today, this remains the only hope.”

Erdogan said on Saturday he was pressing Russia to extend the grain deal, currently due to expire on July 17, by at least three months and announced a visit by Putin in August. The Kremlin said over the weekend there was no phone call scheduled and that there was no certainty about the two leaders meeting.

Ankara angered Moscow with its July 8 decision to release to Kyiv five detained Ukrainian commanders of a unit that for weeks defended a steel works in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, with the Kremlin saying Ankara violated agreements.

Ukrainian forces have registered “a definite advance” on the southern flank of the eastern city of Bakhmut, according to Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar.

In a Telegram post Maliar said there was no change in positions on the northern flank. She did not give any further details but attention in recent days has focused on the village of Klishchiivka, lying on heights to the south of Bakhmut.

Earlier Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said they were “making progress” around the city. Russian forces captured Bakhmut in May but are thought to be struggling to maintain control of it.

“Fierce fighting” continued in the southern areas of Melitopol and Berdyansk Maliar said, adding that “We are consolidating our gains in those areas.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meanwhile said he felt no “pressure at all” to see success more quickly. “Today, the initiative is on our side,” Zelenskyy told the US broadcaster ABC. “We are advancing, albeit not as fast [as we would like]. But we are advancing.”

Joe Biden is set to hold talks with Rishi Sunak on Monday, the eve of a two-day Nato summit in Vilnius, with Ukraine set to dominate discussions both in London and in the Lithuanian capital.

The US and the UK are among Ukraine’s strongest supporters, but they differ on Ukraine’s wish to join the military alliance, with Washington much more reluctant than London due to concerns it may provoke Russia.

While all sides have agreed Ukraine cannot join until the war is over, and thus be covered by its guarantee that an attack on one is an attack on all, the UK has been pushing for Kyiv to receive fast-track membership, without the need for it to fulfil a Nato membership action plan.

Meanwhile, the US president on Sunday told CNN that Ukraine was “not yet ready” and made it clear that membership was conditional on more than the war’s end.

“Nato is a process that takes some time to meet all the qualifications – from democratisation to a whole range of other issues,” he said, adding that Nato needed to “lay out a rational path” for membership.

He suggested the US could provide military aid similar to the support it has long provided to Israel.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Livingstone.

US president Joe Biden has landed in London and is set to hold talks with British prime minister Rishi Sunak, ahead of a two-day Nato summit in Vilnius. Ukraine is expected to feature high on the agenda, with discussions focusing on a path for Ukraine’s future membership of the military alliance, and security guarantees for Kyiv in the interim.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said Ukrainian forces had registered “a definite advance” on the southern flank of the eastern city of Bakhmut. Maliar did not give any further details but attention in recent days has focused on the village of Klishchiivka, lying on heights to the south of Bakhmut.

Earlier Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said they were “making progress” around the city. Russian forces captured Bakhmut in May but are thought to be struggling to maintain control of it.

In other key developments:

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he was hoping for “the best possible result” from the summit, after talks with his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda. Zelenskiy has said he does not expect Ukraine to actually join Nato until after the war but that he hopes the summit will give a “clear signal” on the intention to bring Ukraine into the alliance.

The US president spoke to his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, by phone on Sunday and “conveyed his desire to welcome Sweden into Nato as soon as possible”, the White House said. Washington has been increasing pressure on Ankara to drop its opposition to Sweden’s all-but-cleared Nato membership bid ahead of the Vilnius summit.

Erdogan’s office said separately that the Turkish leader had reaffirmed to Biden his longstanding position that Sweden still needed to crack down harder on suspected Kurdish militants to win Turkey’s support. It said the two presidents would meet on the sidelines of the summit.

The Nato meeting comes as members of Biden’s own Democratic party, rights groups and the UN raised questions about the US decision to send cluster bombs, which have been banned by more than 100 countries, to Ukraine. US senator Tim Kaine told Fox News he had “some real qualms” about the move because it “could give a green light to other nations to do something different as well”.

Germany’s president has said the country should not “block” the US from sending cluster bombs to Ukraine, while maintaining its opposition to the use of the weapon. “Germany’s position against the use of cluster munitions is as justified as ever. But we cannot, in the current situation, block the United States,” President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told German broadcaster ZDF on Sunday.

Russian air defence systems shot down four missiles on Sunday, Russian officials said, one over the annexed Crimean peninsula and three over Russia’s Rostov and Bryansk regions that border Ukraine. Several buildings were damaged in Rostov and Bryansk but no casualties were reported. No casualties or damage were reported in Crimea.

South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has said next month’s Brics summit, which Vladimir Putin has been invited to attend, will be held in-person despite an arrest warrant on the Russian leader. “The Brics summit is going ahead and we are finalising our discussions on the format,” Ramaphosa told South African journalists on Sunday on the sidelines of a conference by the ruling ANC, adding it would be a “physical” meeting.